The Republican National Committee on Friday sued the Federal Election Commission for the ability to raise unlimited cash from individual donors.
The central committee, chairman Reince Priebus and Louisiana Republicans filed a joint lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the District of Columbia asking for permission to set up an independent account that could raise and spend potentially enormous sums of money to help federal candidates. Under the current rules, the RNC may only accept $32,400 each year from donors, and local-level parties are capped at $10,000.
"The patchwork of limits on political speech undermines the First Amendment and puts high transparency, full-disclosure groups like the RNC on an unequal footing with other political entities," RNC Chairman Reince Priebus said in a statement. "We are asking that political parties be treated equally under the law."
Super PACs, which operate independently of the political parties or the candidates they support, can raise unlimited money from allies, including corporations and unions. The groups technically cannot coordinate their spending and strategy with their favored candidates, but seldom have they pushed a message that runs counter to the campaigns' wishes.
While emphasizing that they do not want to accept money from corporations or unions as super PACs do, RNC officials said they want to have the same abilities to establish independent accounts that can buy ads, send campaign mail and make phone calls.